The ability to act quickly and decisively in today's increasingly competitive marketplace is critical to the success of any organization. The volume of data that is available to organizations is rapidly increasing and frequently overwhelming. The availability of large volumes of data presents various challenges. One challenge is to avoid inundating an individual with unnecessary information. Another challenge is to ensure all relevant information is available in a timely manner.
Although some push technologies have been developed for automatically delivering content to users, most systems simply “dump” information about a particular subject without regard to users' particular preferences or interests. Some such technologies are available on the World Wide Web and the Internet.
The World Wide Web and the Internet have provided an avenue for information delivery, but current Web-based systems still fail to adequately deliver the right information at the right time. One of the major problems with the World Wide Web is the requirement to utilize a computer and web-browser to access its contents. Although penetration of computers throughout the world has increased, that penetration is far from making information readily available to everyone wherever they happen to be.
Moreover, most computer users connect to the Web through a land line. Most users therefore do not have access to Web content when they are away from a land line. Although technology is being developed to enable World Wide Web access through other mediums, such as web-enabled personal digital assistants, for example, such technology require users to purchase new equipment to access this technology. Given the sparse penetration of personal digital assistants already, this technology does not satisfy the need for delivery of timely information. Also, these systems require the user to initiate the connection to the Internet through the PDA.
These and other drawbacks exist with current systems.